The background: Finally it seems we can talk in terms of a scene, even a movement. There have been acts OD-ing on FX pedals to create dourly emotional quasi-ambient feedbackscapes over the last few years, such as Fennesz, Khonnor and Ulrich Schnauss, but apart from Sweden's brilliant The Radio Dept none of them have allied their love of fuzz, distortion, reverb and drones to properly crafted three-minute pop songs. Until now. The arrival of Crystal Stilts (there's currently a bit of a wave of "Crystal" bands flirting with methamphetamines, but that's another column) confirms what we suspected when we heard fellow New York nugazers/C86 revivalists the Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Vivian Girls and School of Seven Bells – and Glasvegas, oh and that really good new Irish dreampop band, My Bloody something or other – which is that 1986 is the new 1966/1976, ie. the cool (previously uncool, actually) era to plunder.

There are nuances and shades of emphasis within the NY nugaze community. Whereas, say, Vivian Girls are chirpy and bouncy and take their cue from a "cutie" band like Shop Assistants, Crystal Stilts appear to be stuck in a Groundhog Day-type scenario in which they're forced to play variations on the Jesus and Mary Chain's Just Like Honey for all eternity. Apart from a self-titled track, which offers a brief upbeat respite and would make a great theme tune for a sitcom in which the band all live together and get into all sorts of crazy scrapes – kind of, "Hey, hey, we're the Crystal Stilts, and we like, er, taking downers and zoning out" – most of their material is mournful and melancholy, moody and monotone, the aural equivalent of Mandrax.

But if you like that kind of thing, you'll love this lot, who incidentally were "discovered" by Hamish Kilgour of the Clean aka New Zealand's Velvet Underground. If you like the idea of an American singer whose barely-there vocals makes him sound as though he's auditioning for a part in Thames Valley: The Movie, if you like splashy drums that make Moe Tucker sound like John Bonham, bashy tambourines, tinny, surfy 60s organ, wheezy harmonica, echoey spectral guitars and la-la-lee melodies that sound like nursery rhymes played by an extra-miserable Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (because they've just been dropped, possibly) at 18rpm, the whole thing coated in lo-fi gloom, then grab your stripey blue and white T-shirt, squeeze into your black drainpipes, and we'll see you down Syndrome on Oxford Street to celebrate. What, it's closed? Now we're really depressed.

The buzz: "Crystal Stilts have created one of the most perfectly formed reconciliations of classic rock swagger and zoned dream-pop."

The truth: They're a copy of a copy, a studied recreation of a period that was, for all its intimations of adolescent indifference, highly knowing and rock-literate in the first place.